1. Scientific Theories and Laws
2. The First Decade (1936-1946)
4. The Second Decade (1946-1956)
6. The Third Decade (1956-1966)
8. The Fourth Decade (1966-1976)
10. The Fifth Decade (1976-1986)
12. The Sixth Decade (1986-1996)
14. The Seventh Decade (1996-2006)
15. The Theory of More than Everything
16. The Eighth Decade (2006-2016)
18. The Ninth Decade (2016-2026)
Appendix A Paintings
Appendix B TTOMTE and a Steady State Universe
Appendix C Musical Compositions
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Some invisible stuff must carry waves of light everywhere. This carrier doesn't act like matter because planets can plow through it with no problem, and it doesn't slow anything down. Scientists hoped this medium was the one universal thing they could declare as standing still, like the air we tested above. They planned to measure how everything moves through the invisible stuff which they called ether, but not the kind that puts one to sleep. In fact, looking for ether kept many a scientist awake for years.
Think back to the discussions about waves. Remember how waves always used some medium: a flag, water, or air? The medium didn't move. Suppose we had a boat in the water and waves came at us from two spots vibrating with the same frequency. We can tell how we move through the water by comparing the waves as they pass the boat. That's it! Perhaps we can measure how we travel through the medium by comparing light waves as they pass us.
Let's exchange the antigravity machine with the planet Earth, replace sound with light, and replace the still air with ether. We go around the sun about 65,000 miles per hour. We can measure the speed of the light from some distant star one day and then measure the rate six months later. Our two travel speeds in the ether should be different by almost 130,000 miles per hour. Surely we can detect an ether wind. Will any of the methods we used with sound in the atmosphere work with light in the ether?
1. We don't have anything like a weathervane for ether. Ether isn't material like air, so it won't push against the vane, and the spinning scoops won't work for the same reason.
2. Flashing a light is like firing the gun. We can measure how long the light takes to get to the back of our ship (or the Earth, in this case). That's what Galileo tried, but the Earth is just too small.
3. We're left with the tuning fork approach.
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